Gość: Mirko
IP: *.union01.nj.comcast.net
08.10.02, 04:26
...z dziwkami.
" White House - AP Cabinet & State
Sailors Used U.S. Plastic in Brothel
Mon Oct 7, 7:29 PM ET
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Navy personnel used government credit cards to hire
prostitutes at brothels, buy jewelry, gamble and attend New York Yankees and
Los Angeles Lakers games in fraudulent purchases exceeding $200,000,
congressional investigators have found.
Lower-paid enlisted personnel earning between $12,000 and $27,000 were the
biggest abusers but the Navy itself bears responsibility for failure to
monitor the travel card program, the General Accounting Office (news - web
sites) concluded.
The GAO report was prepared for a House hearing on Tuesday and obtained
Monday by The Associated Press.
The study shows the abuses continued many months after the investigators
first publicly reported on problems with the travel cards. From October 2000
through March 2002, the new survey found 1,180 Navy transactions for personal
items totaling $206,700.
The Pentagon (news - web sites) has stepped up its efforts to control use of
the cards. Some 400,000 inactive accounts that were unused during the
previous year have been canceled. Those who abused the cards have had money
involuntarily deducted from their paychecks.
Officials who grant security clearances now are notified when a card holder
comes under investigation. And the military has promised to step up civil and
criminal prosecutions.
Last summer, the GAO found that some 200 Army personnel had used the cards to
get $38,000 in cash that they spent on lap dances and other forms of
entertainment at strip clubs near military bases.
The new Navy study found additional use of the cards to obtain cash at adult
clubs — money normally used to tip dancers, waitresses and bartenders.
"Once again the bottom line is the same: no controls, extensive abuse and no
accountability," said Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-
Iowa, one of the recipients of the GAO study along with Rep. Stephen Horn, R-
Calif.
Grassley, referring to the use of credit cards in two legal Nevada brothels,
added, "This time around there was a new twist. The GAO found abuse taken to
new depths."
The brothel payments were disguised as restaurant and dining bar charges.
In testimony prepared for a House Government Reform subcommittee chaired by
Horn, GAO officials Gregory Kutz and John Ryan sharply criticized the Navy's
lack of scrutiny.
"The Navy's practice of authorizing a travel card to be issued to virtually
anyone who asked for it compounded an already existing problem by giving
those with a history of bad financial management additional credit," said the
officials.
During the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2000, the Navy had about $510
million in travel card charges and about 395,000 individually billed travel
card accounts.
The Pentagon's credit card program has faced increasing scrutiny since 2001,
when auditors disclosed that more than 46,000 Defense Department employees
had defaulted on $62 million in official travel expenses charged to the
government cards.
After the Pentagon began docking the pay of soldiers and defense workers with
unpaid credit card debts last year, the average bad debt write-off dropped
from $1.7 million a month to $300,000 a month.
The Navy report said there were 80 transactions totaling $13,250 at the two
Nevada brothels; 199 purchases for $20,800 at two jewelry stores; 247
transactions totaling $28,700 at three adult clubs; 80 gambling transactions
for $34,250; 72 cruises for $38,300; and 502 purchases of tickets, worth
$71,400, to entertainment events, including "The Phantom of the Opera,"
Yankees and Atlanta Braves baseball games and Lakers basketball games.
The Navy's delinquency rate from the cards fluctuated from 10 percent to 18
percent, about 6 percent higher than for federal civilian agencies, the
report said. As of March 31 this year, more than Navy 8,400 cardholders had
$6 million in delinquent debt, the report said.
The GAO said some personnel holding security clearances had difficulty paying
their travel bills and could be security risks because of their financial
situations. Despite this, Navy security officials were unaware of these
financial problems and could not consider their potential effects in
determining whether to grant a security clearance."
